Close encounter more than 10,000 years ago stirred up spirals in accretion disk

Dazzling close-up images of the natural world, from flowers to flies

Blue-whale-size asteroid to screech past Earth in "close" encounter on June 6. The asteroid, named 2021 GT2, is predicted to safely miss our planet by more than 2.2 million miles (3.5 million kilometers) — or roughly 10 times the average distance between Earth and the moon.

Blue-whale-size asteroid to screech past Earth in close encounter on June 6